Dame Judi Dench looks certain to be one of the first shoo-in nominations for next year’s Best Actress Academy Award with this new stunning portrayal of Queen Victoria.  This highly unusual tale Victoria & Abdul is based on a real life story when the veteran Queen takes a real shine to  Abdul Karim (Ali Fazal), a young clerk who has  traveled from India to participate in the Queen’s Golden Jubilee. The Queen, now a lonely widow, questions the constrictions of her long-held position, and the two forge an unlikely and devoted alliance with a loyalty to one another that her household and inner circle all attempt to destroy.

Dame Judi is already familiar with the eccentricities of Queen Victoria having played her in the the movie Mrs Brown the story of yet another unusual relationship she fostered with a Scottish servant John Brown (Billy Connolly), and the subsequent uproar it provoked. It garnered her a Academy Award Best Actress Nomination, losing out to Helen Hunt on this occasion.  Judging by the new trailer released by Focus Features today of Victoria and Abdul, this year the Award is hers to lose.

This highly anticipated movie directed by Stephen Frears from a script by Lee Hall also stars Adeel Akhtar, Simon Callow, Michael Gambon, Eddie Izzard, Ruth McCabe, Tim Pigott-Smith, Julian Wadham, Olivia Williams and Fenella Woolgar and is set to be released in the US on 22nd September 2017 : more details at  http://www.focusfeatures.com